Portsmouth’s foreign stars to be taught how to understand Harry Redknapp
Sixteen confused players shipped off to language school
As Paul Whitehouse eloquently demonstrated, it can be difficult to communicate in a dressing room where the majority of players don’t speak English as a first language. Accordingly, sixteen of Portsmouth’s 28-man squad will be sent back to school to learn how to speak proper like:
The crash courses concentrate on how to speak ‘Football English’, learning basic expressions of the game.
Polyglot Solutions, a language school based in Southsea, Hants, has been working with Pompey to ensure players can communicate with each other amid the pressure of a match.
Multi-lingual entrepreneur Dr Jay Kettle-Williams is in charge of the project, which aims to bring players from zero knowledge to a good grasp of football English in just eleven hours.
It will also concentrate on helping Nadir Belhadj and co understand Harry’s cockney vernacular: when he screams “push up into the apples and pairs” [opponent's half] or “play the striker apples and pears” [offside], they should know exactly what he is talking about.
When the players are all speaking fluent ‘Arry, incidents like the one in the video above should be avoided.
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